Redeeming Hope - Public Innovation Archives

"Public Innovation" archive

The best damn advertisement (10:17) - On Sunday, The Washington Post highlighted a great public school superintendent, someone I want everyone to know. I can’t take credit for anything Jack Dale of Fairfax County, VA has done, but I’m sure glad he’s a Harwood Public Innovators Lab Alum. Here’s what I mean. Fairfax County is one of the biggest school districts in all of America – with 164,000 students, 187 schools, and a $2.1 billion annual budget, according to The Post.... | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments

An oxymoron (14:34) - The Catholic Worker Movement and the World Bank, now there’s a combination; no, really, I mean it! In fact, I just finished two books about them and they prompt me to share some reflections about change. See what you think. The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, by Sebastian Mallaby, explores the rise of the larger-than-life bank president Jim Wolfensohn and the bank’s evolving approaches... | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments

Harnessing mass culture and civic life (09:47) - If people often feel helpless to change mass culture, can they change public life? I believe they can. But we must first recognize that such change will require that we take a decidedly civic approach, and not merely mimic mass culture, in order to gain people’s attention and engagement. Last week in his blog, Peter Levine, a truly gifted thinker, talked about the link between what he called civic engagement and culture. He surmised, based... | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments

The consciousness to innovate (14:35) - “We as a community like to believe that we are catalytic, but truth be told we are sustaining the old (tried & true), therefore impeding real change.” This comment was sent to me by an individual at the Dade Community Foundation (greater Miami area) during a Web cast I led last week for community foundations in the Knight Foundation communities. It’s not often that someone is so direct and honest, let alone in a public... | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments

A day at the Lab - Taylor Willingham (15:55) - Taylor Willingham, a participant in the Spring 2006 Public Innovators Lab that The Harwood Institute hosted last week, has written a blog entry on her experiences. It's a great piece that gives you a good idea of what a day in the Lab is like. If you're interested, I encourage you to check it out.... | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments

10 questions for public innovators (22:37) - I’ll be leading our Public Innovators Lab this week in Baltimore, Md., which always brings to a head some fundamental questions about people’s efforts to create change in communities. Here are some questions I hear over and over again from public innovators. See what they spur in you.How can I get other people to see why I’m pursing the path that I am in my work? How can I position, or reposition, my organization so... | 0 Trackbacks | 4 Comments

A good man (10:32) - A good man, Gil Thelen, the publisher of the Tampa Tribune, retired last week, and it’s worth pausing today to think about his work and our own work. In my travels, I have known few people like Thelen who have been able to so authentically combine a sense of integrity, grittiness, innovation, and commitment to his profession and public life. Some of you know that Thelen serves on The Harwood Institute board. I tell you... | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments

Some responses on public innovation (12:08) - Last week, I wrote about my sense of urgency for there to be more public innovation in society if we are to improve public life and politics. Today, I want respond to three comments from people who wrote me. David Marsters from Vermont wrote in response to one of my blogs, that too many of us “worship relentlessly at the altar of efficiency.” I agree David. Our desire to prove just how efficient we are... | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments

Public innovators: Drivers of change (09:19) - What’s going to drive public innovation in public life and politics? People will. In the final analysis, we need public innovators to imagine a different path, to build different kinds of mechanisms, to create organizations that are catalytic, to create the conditions for a more robust public life and politics. Recently, my colleagues and I looked back over nearly 20 years of Harwood Institute work, and one of the key insights we gained was that... | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments

Creating organizations that innovate (12:39) - Imagine you’re trying to create change in a community, and you need a civic-minded organization or group ready to innovate. Imagine, too, that each of the organizations you have in mind has a strategic plan; is guided by sophisticated benchmarks to measure impact; and their staffs have attended conferences on some of the latest management theories. Unfortunately, too often the gap between good management and public innovation is far too wide. This week I’ve been... | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments

Mechanisms in public life (14:30) - I want to start today in a place you might think I would not begin: our need to create good mechanisms in public life and politics. The urgency for public innovation in this particular area is great; we need more mechanisms within society to help us produce real change and foster hope within people. My fear is that too often we fail to meet both these tests. Every day people are creating what I am... | 0 Trackbacks | 3 Comments

Why we need public innovation (18:16) - Folks, we need a new kind of public innovation in our communities if we are to make the progress in public life and politics we all seek. Just last week, a person from California who is working to create change in that state made the following observation: people will decide to join with him almost as a matter of faith, or they will retreat because their rational mind tells them that everything in public life... | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments